Juggling between instruction, assessments, holiday projects, fundraisers, crafts for the families, classroom decorating, plus all the things going on in your personal life (specially if you plan to travel during the holidays), it's not an easy task. No wonder by the last day of school before the winter break, you are completely exhausted!
Here it is just a sample of some of the things we did this month (some freebies included!):
We started the month by preparing suitcases and materials for Holidays Around the World:
The back of the suitcase displays a very handy world map, so students can keep track of each country they "travel" to.
As we visited each of the nine countries, we collected, read, and colored these brochures:
Each brochure provides fun facts about holidays traditions for each country:
You can click on the image below to check it out in my store:
We also filled applications for a very important job: Elves'!
So, I took pictures of all my students wearing an elf hat, and we made this craft:
Here are the projects on display. Inspired by the wonderful graphics of EDUCLIPS, I made the big elf you see in the middle:
The big elf is holding a "HELP WANTED" sign. You can download it for free, just click on the picture:
Another fun project we made was the gingerbread boy and girl:
Of course, since we were on the topic of the Gingerbread Man, we had to have a Gingerbread Man HUNT!!!
This is the first letter we found in our classroom, along with yummy gingerbread cookies:
This letter lead to a series of clues all around our school, until we finally found him!!
Then the debate started: should we eat him???
I must say... he was delicious!
(If you are interested on the letters for the Gingerbread Man Hunt, they are included as a bonus on my Gingerbread Man Writing Unit).
We had a lot of fun with the Gingerbread Man, but one of our favorites projects was making the Magic Reindeer food with this adorable puppets:
We also did some reindeer writing: What do reindeer do after Christmas??
We had a blast making these Christmas trees with ice cream cones and lots of frosting:
We worked very hard making these gifts for our families: a cute snowman candle holder, made with an empty baby food jar, and this adorable ornament with students' hand prints.
To download for free these editable tags (you can type the year) with a cute poem for the hand print ornament click on the picture below:
To decorate the gift bag, instead of a bow, a made these very easy and economical snowflake ornaments:
For my students this year I bought these dollar books from Scholastic using my points:
I wrapped the books and attached a candy cane with this tag (click on the picture to download the editable tag for free):
All the activities, all the hard work, was all worth it! Yes, I am completely drained, but we had a ball and we made so many precious memories together!
Now it's time to rest! Until next year!
Thank you for reading! Wishing you a very happy Holiday Season,
